


shadow-dance

by ninemoons42



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Doppelganger, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Inspired by Episode Ignis, Inspired by Music, Introspection, Not Canon Compliant, Zine: The Regalia Mixtape (Final Fantasy XV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23900413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Why does he feel alive here? Why do his feet move so readily to the driving rhythms -- given over to the governance of his body, his id, locked into the beat of the thumping spiraling track? Why is he wading into this crowd, weaving and ducking and swaying around outthrust arms and legs -- moving with this entire unity of dancers, looking for room to swing --
Comments: 5
Kudos: 5





	shadow-dance

**Author's Note:**

> I was one of the writers selected to be part of the Final Fantasy XV music-themed zine, The Regalia Mixtape! (I'm also proud to say I helped come up with the title of the zine itself.) This one's been a long time coming, and I'm glad to have had the chance to post this fic now :)

Clash and clatter of keys. Dazed whir of desktop-computer chassis, fans keeping temperatures at barely negotiated equilibria. Hum of climate control that settles like agony, like needle-like drafts in his feet. 

He presses his fingertips to his temples, and the headache doesn’t even feel sharp any more. He’s used to its presence, its taloned weight, perched watchfully on his head. It’s just as much background noise as the lonely echoes of this space. The whisper of his breathing and his heartbeat, the one last holdout into the deepening night.

One more night, long since over, and having locked down his workstation, he pushes against the weight of fatigue that creaks protest from his shoulders on down.

And it’s not until he’s checking over his satchel that he’s roused -- that’s the only word he can think of -- yanked back into the here and now, like something catching him in claws, shaking him. _Attention!_

Fierce hollowing yearning salt-tang, strong in the air suddenly, pulsing exactly to the pace of waves pounding at a breakwater -- it thorns in his lungs, on the back of his tongue. A different kind of bitter: ash falling into the corners of his mouth, still smoldering. The flash-burn of sparks in the air.

But -- how? How can he be haunted by fire? If he turns his chair in a certain direction, he’ll glimpse -- the exact opposite entirely. Moonlight scudding on the crash of waves, like foam, ceaseless restless. The shadow-colored sea that forms one of the boundaries of this city, its entire eastern edge, rough and harsh border.

The smell of it and the sight of the shrouded moon and stars -- more than enough excuse to do one more foolish thing before he seeks his bed and the vain tossing and turning of a handful of hours.

If he flinches away from his pallid reflection in the washroom mirrors, there’s no one here to see -- and even if there had been anyone else, they’d only have to look at the bruised shadows beneath his eyes to recognize him, if only in a shallow sad way. The weight of the busywork and the endless shuffling nonsense of paperwork, from desks to shredders to ash. 

Not the same ash that lingers in his breath, in his mind, as he exchanges his workaday whites for the things he keeps in the bottom of his satchel. A different shirt entirely. The contents of the hidden compartment in the flat leather case where he keeps a few everyday-carry items.

The world of this night passes from him in a blur, in the back of a cab.

Click of his soles against the pavement of his destination, and he doesn’t know why that sound draws the attention of the queue and its impatient watchful muttering. It doesn’t seem right to suddenly have to face so many pairs of assessing eyes -- he’s no different from any of them, really -- 

Or is he, when someone at the steel-jambed door, velvet-rope terminus, calls out to him: “Hey!”

And -- he knows that face, at least. Dark bob, and the fluorescent radiance of shocking pink side-locks. Copper and bronze highlighter along cheek and jaw and throat. The elaborate purple sash tied above her hips, water-current lines rippling as she beckons him forward. “You coming in?”

“I would like to,” he says, and then he wordlessly gestures at everyone else.

Her smile shows off far too many far too sharp teeth.

And it’s a shock, again, to realize that she just about comes up to his shoulder: he always has the opposite impression of her, the idea of looking down, her almost-golden eyes gleaming searching at him. 

Imperious wave of her hand, that he obeys. His feet take him past the line. Through the door that she opens for him and down the short dark corridor, blue-neon lights running just above the floor and pulsing -- 

Opening into a space that’s always a surprise, because it’s large and it’s full, every night without fail: he can’t even glimpse the corners for the seething whirl of movement. A hundred dancers? Two hundred? No way of knowing -- not even in those end-of-the-night moments of the house lights coming up and staying up, well after sunrise. Of the club in its closing rituals.

Streaking strobing lights everywhere, picking out details, movements, visible for half-heartbeats. Flash of snow-white hair falling into eyes of odd colors. Someone’s bare back, the freckles on the skin picked out in neon-blue body paint. Arms and shoulders swathed in black lace, arch of a neck in a leather collar, wrists banded in golden chain-links. Pins spiking in long streaming pale-colored hair, gleaming points in a makeshift crown. Beaded braids and an entire constellation of hunting-cat spots all over someone’s naked torso.

Not for the first time, he feels underdressed: the scarlet of his shirt, the copper hoops and chains of the complete suite of his earrings, the steel of his rings. His embellishments, his self-expressions, and yet he’d fade into this crowd, into its wild finery.

Why does he feel alive here? Why do his feet move so readily to the driving rhythms -- given over to the governance of his body, his id, locked into the beat of the thumping spiraling track? Why is he wading into this crowd, weaving and ducking and swaying around outthrust arms and legs -- moving with this entire unity of dancers, looking for room to swing -- 

“Good night?” A teasing rasp of a question: he stops, and so does everyone else. All eyes drawn immediately to the DJ. The raised console and her circle of machinery and instrumentation and speakers, blasting the beat past the walls. The house lights falling onto luminous skin. “Let me hear you scream.”

He throws his head back and whoops, too -- he doesn’t need to talk at work and so it’s a surprise when he manages to produce something like a full-throated cry, rising along with all the other voices hemming him in. The press of the crowd that’s almost enough to lift him clear off his own feet. 

“I like that,” the DJ says. Silver contact lenses to match the rough-hacked ends of her hair. The dragon-shape tattooed into her skin, dark-gray intensity -- every detailed scale visible as she throws her arms wide open. Oversized claws below the hollow of her throat. “But you know what else I like?”

He needs to breathe now, he needs to fill his lungs now, knowing what she’s asking. The easy mastery of her, the library of tracks that she must carry with her wherever she goes, and the sweet compulsion of her mixes. Like blades sliding through him, driven inexorably into his nerves and down his veins -- 

Eyes closed to shut the world out -- shut his days out -- the voices of his supervisors and the incessant ding of online messages that he doesn’t even need to be privy to. He doesn’t even want to know, and yet he’s expected to at least stay up to date. There’s such a thing as too much information, and he knows from far too personal experience what that does to a mind.

Which is why he -- listens, deliberately, purposefully -- for the bass-beat and then for the gradually introduced layers of effects, of vocals. The seamless blend of sound of rhythm of voices. 

All he wants is to _let go_.

And all the while he’s been on the move, distantly aware of the small bubble of space he’s been granted on this dance floor. All around the faces gone blank and smoothed over into perfect delirium -- minds given over to the music. Notes tied around everyone else for strings, for controls, and -- he’s surprised, honestly, not to see those strings on his own hands and feet. Shoulders and hips swaying and --

Beat, dropping, and he feels it hit, tight in the pleasure centers -- lets it move him and he spins in a spiral of long languid intensity, from the soles of his shoes and all the way on up and out to the tips of his fingers, raised overhead as if to catch the laser-beams, as if to let the laser-show pierce him through, head to toe.

Everything falls away from him: the awareness of his own movements. The self-conscious urge to check himself and make sure he doesn’t inadvertently offend anyone by getting in too close when he doesn’t mean to -- dance partnered -- that’s the first thing to go and how glad he is for it. His hands open like a martial artist’s, chopping, striking; his hands close into the fists of a pugilist, punching and weaving. 

Or -- he lunges, he dodges, as if dancing to stay one step ahead of lethal lashing knives. The thought of half-familiar faces on the attack, chasing him down streets paved in arch-shapes and fan-blocks of stone and shell and salt.

The same salt he’d been dreaming of, lost in his earlier fugue -- he moves his hand quickly past his face, still trying to sweep the strangeness of the memory away. The unexpectedness of it. Why would he be thinking of -- fighting for his life? What could possibly be chasing him? He’s not even doing that much; he just happens to be working on tedious minutiae, and that’s why his thoughts are running down, left unhinged and pointless -- 

He throws all his energies into dancing instead, and the music intensifies. Claws into him. The deeper darker rhythms, the coruscating vocal and rhythmic tracks.

Why does he think of -- fire and lightning and ice crackling down his nerves, all at once, or one after the other? Why does he think of -- power, the gorgeous pain and the terrifying pleasure surging like blades in his mind -- in his hands -- 

And the ash-burn, too, throbbing at his temples. For some reason that burn seems to seize around his left eye -- the strain of the club’s lights -- he closes his eyes and tries to catch a breath -- rasp of whisper-warning along his nerves and it must only be a trick of this place, a trick of this light, that makes him think that something or someone’s stalking his way, intent on pain -- 

He throws his arms up, crossed at the wrists, makeshift shield over his face -- and with a deafening crash the DJ’s mix stops, too.

Lights coming up, and the instant he opens his eyes is blank and blind -- 

Only for a moment, though. He knows no one could attack him -- the entire room is bright for just a moment -- the laser-show gone still and all the vibrant luminaires throwing warm white washes onto the walls, letting him see -- 

Smiles and the beginnings of laugh-lines, perhaps, in the faces of the people who’ve been dancing around him. Here and there the shapes of linked hands, of arms thrown around shoulders, of pairs and small groups, of embraces. 

He -- exhales, then, and understands the warning click in his jaw. He’s been clenching his teeth. He’s been braced for blows. The possibility of getting kicked or thrown or worse, to a pavement that stinks of saltwater and the copper-rust of his own blood.

He wipes his hand across his mouth, in the here and now, and -- nothing but his own sweat where he had been expecting crimson and shock.

The house lights flicker, flicker, rapid-flight speed -- go dark with a crash that vibrates in his skin and in his bones -- swoop and swirl of a fresh set of strobe lights throwing lurid red and purple fire-glow -- startled faces that must include his own, and knowing smiles here and there, too, in the crowd -- 

The voice that comes on at that moment in a low rolling challenge of a growl makes him blink, makes him look back up at the consoles -- at the exact moment that the DJ starts singing, and one of the machines arrayed around her must be doing the work of multiplying her solo vocal track, turning the single vocalist into a virtual choir -- 

Cheering all around him -- but he’s certain of the looks of relief on some of the faces around him -- he wonders if he’s not wearing one, himself.

The other revelers look -- more jaded -- more like blank masks. Identical rank on rank of human shapes. Shadows of eyes and noses and mouths and cheeks and foreheads, caught and darkening in the renewed sweep of the laser-lights.

He can hide the prickles of fear that had been running icy-cold down his spine, if he closes his eyes and throws his head back. If he spins in place and lets his hands move on their own, freed again of his conscious control -- like he’s chasing the notes, like he’s shaping them into the form and the rhythm that the rest of his body can follow.

It’s not as easy to actually let go of that bass-beat of dread -- he has to work to let the music overcome that one -- and then another voice soars out to fill the room -- to fill the world -- he latches on to that sweetly rising cry of power, entirely different register compared to the DJ’s husky melodies, and he can’t contain his relief, or the renewed urgency that pours through him. 

Unfocusing -- unraveling -- he can have this, he can dash his mind to pieces here, on the edges of the music and the dancing -- 

But can he break free, too, from the bitter-salt phantoms, from the thoughts of black-winged fear, the ravening corrupted teeth nipping at his heels?

Freed from one kind of heartache, only to be flung into another: chaotic menacing, sapping the strength from him, draining the music of its joyful compulsions.

For the first time, he leaves the club long before he’s had his fill of the music and the lights and the movement -- clutching at the side of his head as he goes, wincing like the progenitor of all migraines is treading on the nape of his neck, as heavy as a god’s boot -- 

Blink, blink, the same girl who’d let him in -- she’s reaching out to him -- he can’t even muster any kind of apology, any kind of explanation -- 

Screech of an empty car, an empty cab, and he stumbles past it and away. Around the street corner that he no longer recognizes, anywhere as long as it isn’t the club, anywhere else -- 

How has he kept all his things with him, that he can try to fumble for something to cover his face with? Pain like screeching and talons in his left eye -- it’s more than enough to drive him to his knees and howl, and yet -- he keeps walking somehow, slow and hurting --

“Here. Breathe, now.”

Not like he can escape the hands catching at his arms, skin to skin, firm grasp -- not like he can turn away from the command in that voice. Command, but not orders, almost gentle, and he heaves wind and salt into his chest, sharp scouring.

Hammer of his pulse like the beat from the club, only it’s all gone wrong and jagged, thoughts escaping his tattered grip and -- the tears, when they come, are no illusion, and he can’t hold them back in his clenched fists.

“Why,” he asks, without a hope of an answer, without a hope of a haven.

He doesn’t even know why he’s asking. Who he’s asking.

“If only I could tell you,” and it’s that same voice that had caught him. The same person who’s here, propping him up, burning to his touch. “I can only advise. I cannot -- offer you anything else of myself. I’m stretched thin as it is.”

“Don’t I know that feeling.” Saying it out loud, for the first time -- he’s only ever allowed himself to think it, in the silence of dancing, in the skirling wildness of the club and its music.

“You have yourself, still. You have your strength.”

“I can’t feel any of it right now.”

And he looks up, at last -- 

It could almost have been his own face, grave and pained and wise. The same ravaged face he’d seen earlier, in the mirrors -- but the lines of this other person’s face are burned and blasted in so many ways. Red and brown in old and new bruises. Nothing at all like his own worry-lines, his own sallow shadows. 

The eyes: they’re different, too, weary and wary and wreathed in strange purple -- and he turns his hands. Holds on so tightly he can see his own knuckles go pale, and yet this person, this twin, doesn’t even flinch.

All he can do is pour himself out. “Help me. Please.”

Smile. Tempered, he thinks, might be the word for it. A blade that’s passed through flame and storm and bitter tears. 

A hand that bears the cold-frost shadow of a black band on the fourth finger.

“Believe,” is what he hears now. “That will be enough, until -- ”

One moment he’s holding on to his shadow, to his twin, to his other-self -- and in the breath between words he’s alone again, he’s adrift again -- 

But now there’s a ring on his left hand, too, black and cold and entirely new and -- he holds on to it, to the memory of those burning eyes, and tries to get back to his feet.

**Author's Note:**

> Little bit of a bittersweet thing to add at the end of this, but this pretty much stands as my last FFXV fic. I'm glad that I started out with writing about Ignis and then, I'm posting this, which is exactly also about him. It's a good thing, I think, coming around to close the circle. The Chocobros will always have a special place in my heart, and I'm grateful for the fandom because it saved my life and helped me find wonderful friends and dear collaborators. I'm just a little bit sorry I couldn't have stayed any longer. 
> 
> Walking tall, always.
> 
> *****
> 
> ninemoons42 on Twitter: [@ninemoons42](https://twitter.com/ninemoons42)


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